| Electric Light Orchestra – Turn To Stone Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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The meaning of the song is relatively straightforward. The love of his life has left him and he remains miserable hoping that she will return some day. The melody of this song is beautiful and resonates a style that is distinctively ELO. Even if you heard another band play it you would recognize it as an ELO song. The brilliance of the song is not in its simplistic meaning, it is found in the poetry of the lyrics, and the craft in which this melancholy feeling is conveyed to the listener. He begins by explaining his emptiness and how his world has gone dim. He uses the imagery of the city streets being empty and the lights not shining any more. The sadness and lost of zest for life are, "the songs that are way down low". These thoughts keep turning and turning around in his head. He contrasts these sad thoughts with faint memories of the good times he had with her in the past. The memories of the past, of "everything that is alive", are the "sounds that flow into his mind". These memories are faint, occurring within the background of the more intense sadness, which is why they are only "echos of the daylight". This is his current condition, the condition of being in his "blue world". His love for her still burns like a fire, but the torment he goes through each day is worst at night and begins to fade by dawn. This subtle insight will ring true for anyone who has experience love loss. He uses this romantic phrase "the dying embers of the night" to capture this meaning. The next line, "still glows upon the wall so bright, burning, burning". Perhaps some time has passed and yet his passion for her still glows bright. I like the usage of the word burning here. In the previous verses he used turning, turning to mean the thoughts of sadness in his mind. Here he uses burning, burping to mean the torment of the heart. So this affair affects both heart and mind and it is all consuming. "The tired street hat hide away, from here to everywhere they go. Roll past my door into the day". In the night he goes searching for her. At every turn and corner he does not find her so the streets look the same or tired. The search is endless but finally at daybreak the search leads him back home. This may not literally be a search on the physical streets, but more likely he is constantly imagining and scheming a way to get her back. Turn to Stone, the title and theme of the song, indicates a stone, an inanimate object, not alive. The will to live has left him and like a tone he's paralyzed to participate in living his life. On a different aspect, like a stone, he can make his heart hard, so that it is protected from being broken. His only salvation is that she returns. In a last ditch effort he doesn't give up hope and resolves that she "will return again some day." Meanwhile, he's still turning to stone. …so many poetic ways to convey a single feeling. |
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| Electric Light Orchestra – Can't Get It Out Of My Head Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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For many of us this song is special. Especially if you've ever been infatuated with someone in your life and experienced the terrible desperation of "can't to get it out of my head". The first line, "Midnight, on the water", describes the setting, place and mood when love can easily be inflicted. The "ocean's daughter" is Venus the goddess of love who was born from the waves. She is not the object of his infatuation but she is the cause of love occurring between people similar to cupid's role in causing people to fall in love. It's interesting how Jeff deliberately uses the word "chicane" instead of "she came", because he's not referring to the girl that he is in love with but rather this particular situation of love that makes one helpless. Chicane in this context means trickery, and the goddess of love, "walking on the wave", uses her powers and one is tricked and falls into this helpless condition. In the next line, the goddess had called his name, a kind of random act and he fell choicelessly in love. Now he can't get it out of his head. Jeff could have used the word "her" instead of "it", but he uses the word "it" because again he is making a deliberate distinction between this song being about a particular girl and particular situation of love that is desperate. This song is about love’s situation. This love is dire. It is so engrossing he can't think or do anything else. He can't move, he's breaking down, his old world the one he is familiar and comfortable with is no more. He's is struggling to get it out of his head and in to escape this miserable love condition, he is searching for her silver light. This means he's looking for a way to appease the goddess so she may release him from his love trap. Robin Hood and William Tell and Ivanhoe and Lancelot, they don't envy me. This line is quite poetic and the pace it is shouted adds dimension to the song. The song is wonderful in the beginning and middle but anticipation keeps building and I always look forward to this line. All these men are great and fearless heroes. Time and time again they faced every kind of danger and countless times they've risked their lives and concurred powerful adversaries. They walk this earth without fear. Except even they are powerless when it comes to love. Fight a dragon, no problem but face love's desperation willingly, that requires a real hero. And for that reason, they don't envy him. Listen to Livin’ Thing & Turn to stone which are also great song with similar meaning. |
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